Researchers Build a Particle Accelerator that Fits on a Chip
upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Cascade:
Researchers build a particle accelerator that fits on a chip:
On a hillside above Stanford University, the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory operates a scientific instrument nearly 2 miles long. In this giant accelerator, a stream of electrons flows through a vacuum pipe, as bursts of microwave radiation nudge the particles ever-faster forward until their velocity approaches the speed of light, creating a powerful beam that scientists from around the world use to probe the atomic and molecular structures of inorganic and biological materials.
Now, for the first time, scientists at Stanford and SLAC have created a silicon chip that can accelerate electrons-albeit at a fraction of the velocity of that massive instrument-using an infrared laser to deliver, in less than a hair's width, the sort of energy boost that takes microwaves many feet.
Writing in the Jan. 3 issue of Science, a team led by electrical engineer Jelena Vuckovic explained how they carved a nanoscale channel out of silicon, sealed it in a vacuum and sent electrons through this cavity while pulses of infrared light-to which silicon is as transparent as glass is to visible light-were transmitted by the channel walls to speed the electrons along.
The accelerator-on-a-chip demonstrated in Science is just a prototype, but Vuckovic said its design and fabrication techniques can be scaled up to deliver particle beams accelerated enough to perform cutting-edge experiments in chemistry, materials science and biological discovery that don't require the power of a massive accelerator.
[...] Team members liken their approach to the way that computing evolved from the mainframe to the smaller but still useful PC. Accelerator-on-a-chip technology could also lead to new cancer radiation therapies, said physicist Robert Byer, a co-author of the Science paper. Again, it's a matter of size. Today, medical X-ray machines fill a room and deliver a beam of radiation that's tough to focus on tumors, requiring patients to wear lead shields to minimize collateral damage.
"In this paper we begin to show how it might be possible to deliver electron beam radiation directly to a tumor, leaving healthy tissue unaffected," said Byer, who leads the Accelerator on a Chip International Program, or ACHIP, a broader effort of which this current research is a part.
On-chip integrated laser-driven particle accelerator [$], Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.aay5734)
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